


Fight Off The Light Tonight And Just Stay With Me

by gendfleur



Series: She's In A Long Black Coat Tonight, Waiting For Me In The Downpour Outside [3]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Gen, New Earth, Post-Canon, but we also dont tolerate dersecest comments [kissy face], is this just platonic ???? WE DONT KNO
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-08-20
Updated: 2016-10-09
Packaged: 2018-08-09 21:18:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 9,904
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7817584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gendfleur/pseuds/gendfleur
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're here.</p><p>He's here.</p><p>They're gone.</p><p>And you're never going to leave.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> u thought the last fic was a oneshot U THOUGHT WROOOOOOOOOOOOOOONG
> 
> have this (tentative) shipping chart so u can see if theres any notps of urs that im potentially including [here u go](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1eklLkbFT1OsmHBSYh7RECe0cIH3R16alI5trCxflkrE/edit?usp=sharing)
> 
> also the graphic depictions of violence tag is fr nightmares bt i added it just in case !!! stay safe babes

Everything is dark.

Everything is dark, and your head hurts.

But there's something missing, there's something gone, and there's a relief for it, it makes you feel good instead of sad -

You sit up suddenly and almost immediately fall back over from the sudden rush of blood to your head, which happens to be a good thing, because it gives you a few minutes to think.

They're not in your head anymore.

You stop breathing for a second to listen, to really Listen, and you notice the silence around you, and you notice the way the breeze ( _breeze_?) runs through the trees ( _trees_??), and the warm sunlight ( _sunlight_???) seeps through the thin skin of your eyelids, and you -

Wait.

You open your eyes.

For the first time in a long, long, long time, what you see isn't the four walls of your room, or the blinding light of LOLAR, or the sheets of iridescent rain.

It's a blue sky, and green trees, and fluffy white clouds with no rain, and a sun that looks like a sun, and grass under your hands. It's birds chirping, and a sparrow three feet from you, and a little patch of wildflowers in front of your feet. It's a beautiful yellow dress-like outfit that you've never alchemized before.

And you have no fucking idea what's going on.

You haven't had a dream in years, let alone a dream that didn't directly involve the horrorterrors, let alone a dream where you couldn't even hear them.

Very carefully, so as to avoid the previous sudden rush of blood to the head, you stand up, and you stretch your arms over your head, and let the warmth of this sun permeate your being, and you run your fingers through your hair, and you take a deep, cleansing breath (you can almost see the dark slime of the last traces of Them leaving your system forever in the water vapor) and you try to remember what happened before you woke up here.

Nothing directly comes to mind, but you figure as your brain works on that, you should probably start looking for some kind of civilization, because as much as your logical brain tells you this is a dream, your emotional brain wants you to not starve to death.

And you'd not like to kill any animals with your bare hands today, please and thank you.

As you have often done, you let the delicate whims of fate guide you, closing your eyes and spinning around a few times before setting off in whatever distance your feet land.

You walk for maybe thirty minutes, breathing deeply and subconsciously searching for the horrorterrors, wondering idly when They're going to come back. They can't just be gone, of course - you've lived aweekamonthayearadecadeacentury with them, and while you've never known Them to just leave, you suppose serenely that this is just a new trick in a long list of them.

You suppose, with a lack of emotion borne of years and years with screaming abominations in your head, that you were getting a bit too used to the way things were.

At the end of thirty minutes (or at least, as close to thirty minutes as you can assume, as your sense of time isn't very exact anymore), you see something off in the distance, and, while you don't quicken your pace or something equally silly, you have a destination to head toward now. It looks somewhat like a rural city, and as you get closer, you find that your initial impression was more or less right.

More or less.

The buildings, for sure, are kind of thrown together, though they look like pretty decent shelter from the elements (a small part of yourself ridicules you for critiquing the architecture of a dream. you tell that part of yourself to can it.), and you'd definitely prefer it to nothing. However, the organized mess is patched up with bits and pieces of things that look almost... futuristic. Bolts and metal hold together wood and nails, shiny chrome contrasting sharply with dull brown, and the juxtaposition is... intriguing, to say the least.

You suppose your dreamscape is having a bit of a tough time deciding what era to stick you in. It's okay, you internally reassure it, you'll just go with the flow.

You round a corner, and... well, that sure is a little robot working on one of the houses.

You stare at the robot (a little round-y thing only a foot and a half tall at most), and the robot stares at you (or you think so, it's a bit hard to tell when it doesn't have any pupils), and you're frozen in silence for a couple seconds.

Then the robot squeals gratingly (you snarl and cover your ears, and were the horrorterrors still communing with you, you're sure the thing would be scrap) and darts around the corner, and you're left to just blink away your confusion. After a second of hesitation, you run after it - might as well see who it's reporting to.

The little round pile of parts notices your pursuit and squeals again, running faster. Of course, it's a foot and a half tall, and, barring it being rocket powered, doesn't have much in the way of being able to outrun a five foot human. Still, it's quick, and keeps you running almost full-tilt, and you cut a corner close -

right into something else's unforgiving torso.

You fall right back on your ass, the wind knocked out of you, and have to cough, hard, a few times before looking up at the person you just accidentally slammed into.

"... holy shit, are you okay??"

Oh, great. Your dreamscape has manufactured you aliens.

This specific alien is probably five and a half feet tall, built pretty stocky, coarse black hair wild around two little yellow-and-orange horns, dark grey skin smooth-looking, and is, despite the sunny weather, wearing a grey turtleneck and a very concerned look on their face.

It takes you four or five seconds to recognize that last sentence was directed to you, and you open your mouth to reply, but realize that apparently weeksmonthsyearsdecadescenturies without speaking properly really does a number on your vocal chords and, even in a dreamscape, your voice doesn't work right; you could probably speak in the naturally grating grimdark tongues, but you doubt they'd be able to understand it. After a frustrating few seconds, you decide to just nod, standing up and brushing yourself off.

"Jesus dipshit Christ, I get out of the politeness orgy for thirteen goddamn seconds and run right the fuck over someone," the alien mutters to themselves, looking mildly abashed despite their language. "Which human are you, then, I thought for sure we had all you delicate little fuckers."

You cock your head and brush your hair out of your face a little, wishing you had your voice so you could make some smarmy-ass comment about how they're only maybe five or six inches taller than you, and probably weigh about the same. However, the moment your eyes meet, they look incredibly startled, and take a step back. Uncertain, you look down at your arms - not grey, not staticky, not grimdark - then up at them again, wondering what the deal is here. If this turns out to be another one of those "running away from the general populace as they try to murder you" dreams, you're going to shoot yourself in the face.

"... uh...." The alien takes another step back. "I thought there were only two Lalondes."

Now it's your turn to start feeling uncomfortable. They know your surname. They know who you are.

You take a deep breath, remind yourself that it's a dream and your subconscious regularly does a lot more than this to fuck with you, and raise an eyebrow at the alien, deciding to go the "lofty asshole" route. To be fair, it's about the only route you've got right now, with no working voice.

The alien turns slightly, starting to walk back, and what comes out of their mouth next turns your blood cold.

"... Jade???"

And suddenly you know this dream. You know this dream so fucking well, you've had it over and over again - it's going to be Jade and John and Dave, and maybe they'll be kind at first or maybe they'll be murderous off the bat, but they'll always, always try to kill you.

Jade always comes first. Much of the time, she's kind at the beginning. She smiles at you, and she laughs, and occasionally you're naïve enough to believe her, to walk to her and open your arms to her, to hug her for the very first time like you always wanted to - and she rakes her nails down your chest, opening bloody gashes through your dress.

She always screams at you. She screams that you let her die, that you didn't save her, that you didn't even get her into the fucking game so she could prove herself, you let her die in flames against a meteor storm on Earth.

You've never once said anything to the contrary.

She always keeps raking her nails through your skin, trying to rip you to ribbons with nothing but her bare hands. The first time you'd reacted in a burst of fear and pushed her back, and before you knew it you'd grabbed your needles and thrown a bolt of dark energy through her skull. (you'd sobbed your fucking eyes out afterward, both in the dream and outside it.) The next time you'd done the same thing, but it had been a little more ritualized, a little more sanitized.

After a while, you stopped even pushing her away. You'd never felt her hands against you in reality, and even if it hurts, it fucking burns, it crackles and snaps against your skin, you let her touch you, and you place your needles against her chin, and you kiss her cheek as the terrors burn her brains out.

John comes next, every single time. Usually by then you've lost some blood, and you're tired, but something inside of you won't let you lay down and die at this point. Sometimes he waits for a little while, and sometimes he's directly on Jade's heels, but he always comes at you guns a-blazing, and you find yourself dodging hammer strikes as you try to think through your strategy.

He always laughs at you. He laughs, and says _damn rose, i said to let loose, not let yourself go!_ as the head of his hammer smashes into your ribs, a cracking sound echoing through your ears as you stumble away.

At the beginning, you tried to reason with him, to tell him _it's me, Rose, it's your friend, what are you doing, it's me!_ but you were just wasting your breath, because he'd come after you just as hard. The first time, you'd gotten off a lucky shot, right through the side of his torso, and he just looked at you for two or three seconds. Then he laughed, and he crumpled to the ground, and his breathing stopped. (you'd crumpled on top of him, sobbing and begging him to be okay, apologizing over and over again until the sound of your own voice made you throw up.) The next time was just as messy, but maybe a little faster.

Nowadays, you're a lot cleaner with it. You dance around his reach until he makes a wrong move, and you let a soft word slip from your tongue and slide right between his ears, and you look away as his visage melts in front of you and he falls to the ground without another word.

And every time, that is when you beg the mercy of the horrorterrors for death, for some way out of the dream, no matter how painful.

Because you love Jade and John, you adore them, you do, but they were not your rock. They were not your other half, they did not share your brokenness, they did not whisper terrified secrets at 4 in the morning as time ticked down in the background to a deadline nobody wanted to meet.

They were not Dave.

And every time, in this nightmare, after your hands are wet with the blood, literal or figurative, of your best friends, every time you've finished with the ritualized slaughter of two people who were so dear to you in life, every time you get dizzy from the injuries you've already sustained, you stand up straight and close your eyes and wait, listening, for the final boss of this nightmare level.

And he comes. He always comes.

That's when you drop your needles, because you don't need them anymore. He leans on his sword and pulls his shades up, letting them rest on his head, and no matter how much you don't want to, you meet them. They're dull with disappointment, every time. And he says, _rose_ (and something in you breaks just a little more every time he says your name, even though you know it's a distant echo of times you heard it over the phone, over the speakers of your computer, over the ears of your headphones, in waking moments), _rose, what did you do to yourself?_

And every time the dream happens, you say the same thing. _I don't know._

 _i thought you promised to take care of yourself._ (he says.)

 _I know._ (you did. you promised him, in the middle of the night, when you didn't know how you were going to make it until he had to leave.)

_i sacrificed everything to put the timeline back together, you know. you got to sit and wait._

_I know._ (and wait you did, for weeksmonthsyearsdecadescenturies.)

_all you had to do was take care of yourself. this is why they didnt erase you. if youd kept up your end of the bargain, maybe youd have joined up with the alpha rose like you could have._

_I'm sorry._ (and you are. you're so, so, godfucking sorry, because you failed the most important person in the world, the universe, the galaxy, the most important person in every fucking timeline, the most important person to you.)

And he takes his sword and presses it against your chest, and you don't feel anything. You hold your hand out to him, and sometimes he takes it, and you're comforted for a few fleeting moments by the feeling of his dry skin against yours, his solid and steady grasp against your shaky, weak one.

And every time, you kiss his cheek, like you kissed Jade's, as he stabs you through the heart.

And every time, you wake up and cry for hours, you sob brokenly, because you know you're a disappointment. You know you did this to yourself. You know that if you could just keep yourself together, if you could stop killing yourself four times a week, you wouldn't be such a fucking mess.

This is your recurring nightmare.

This dream, the dream with the sun and the birds and the clouds and the sky and the trees, is about to become it.

You come back to the present milliseconds after drifting off, and you uncaptchalogue your needles and let a soft, dark word roll off your tongue, intent on blasting this alien away before they can get Jade, intent on running away for a few moments, preparing yourself to kill your best friends and be killed by your best friend once again.

You blink, and - nothing happens.

No darkness, no death, nothing.

The horrorterrors aren't just out of your head, They're gone, and you find yourself panicking as the alien disappears from sight, yelling loudly for Jade.

They can't expect you to kill your friends with your bare hands, can They? Can They?? God, you've never had to deal with this, They've always just been there, and as terrifying and awful as that is sometimes, you've gotten used to Them, you know Them, you know everything about Them -

You hear Jade's voice - "Rose??" - and you run like hell.

You tear through the forest around you, running and running and running and just trying to get away. You know they'll catch up to you, but you're so fucking tired, and you're so scared, scared like you've never been before in one of these dreams, and you just want to go home.

You blink, and there's a wall in front of you, and somehow you're not in the forest anymore, you're in some kind of barn or something, and you scream. You scream so loud the next fucking galaxy can probably hear you, and you bang your hands on the wall as you slide down to your knees and shout in abrasive grimdark tongues, the only language that will come to your lips, and you beg the horrorterrors in their own words to let you die before this one, please, please just let me die, don't make me go through this again, please, i can't do this, im begging you, please, please just let me die i dont want to hurt them i dont want them to hurt me _please_ -

There's arms around your waist, and a voice in your ear - ( _rose, hey, rose, its okay, shhh, shhhh, rose, shhhh, rose, im right here, its okay_ ) - and you can't stop crying, because that's Dave, that's Dave, that's your Dave, you know somehow deep in your bones that he's your Dave, he's directly off your timeline and he's here and he's holding you and he's not disappointed and oh god please let this keep going please don't let this be a new twist on the old nightmare because you're not sure you can handle that, you're not sure you'll keep even the tattered shreds of your sanity after that -

You turn and bury your face against him, and you're crying and trying to say so many things, you're trying to say things the horrorterrors don't even have words for, and it comes out in a gush of guttural syllables that don't really have a translation, that are just feelings trying to find noise. And the whole time he's just holding you, trembling and making little hushing noises at you, softly breathing words against you - ( _its okay, shhh, ive got you, im here, its okay, rose, its okay, i promise_ ) - and you just let yourself cry. His fingers, crooked and hardened in a way you don't have the brainpower to understand, are carding through your hair, and after so fucking long with no real physical contact you're trembling, shuddering so hard you can't see straight, but he doesn't stop holding you. He just wraps wings around you in a way that your logical brain should be freaking out about (where the hell did wings come from, what the hell is going on) but isn't, if only because you don't have the presence of mind to do so.

It takes a full five minutes of him just hushing you and holding you before the guttural terrorspeak dissolves into words, and you don't even notice, you just hear his soothing words shift - ( _its okay, shh, you dont have to be sorry rose, youre okay, youre okay i promise, shhh, its okay rose_ ) - and you realize your strings of foreign language have deteriorated into an accented mantra, pouring out of you without your input - ( _I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm so sorry I'm sorry please I'm sorry_ ) - barely understandable through the thick sobs shaking your frame as you cling to Dave like he'll evaporate if you don't press every inch of yourself against him. You're terrified he will. You've never had a good dream in the game, and whether this is the very first or, hope of all hopes, isn't a dream at all, you don't want it to end; you need it not to end, because you're terrified of going back to what you were in before this.

It takes you a full twenty minutes to stop begging for forgiveness, and another fifteen to stop sobbing. The whole time, he doesn't stop holding you, though at one point he cradles you tight and shifts so he's sitting against the wall, which is probably easier on his joints. You cling to him, and he clings back, petting his fingers (claws, maybe? talons??) through your hair and resting his head on yours, cocooning you in a looming pair of wings and hushing you gently.

When you finally do stop crying, you don't move, terrified to break the sheen of softness that's permeated the scenario. One of your arms are around his neck, the other laced into his shirt so tightly you can't feel your fingers anymore, and your head is resting against his chest, contenting yourself in the rise and fall of his body as he breathes, soft and steady. You can hear his heartbeat against his skin, and find yourself synching your breathing against it ( _in - two - three - four - out - two - three - four_ ), and you're about to fall asleep when you startle awake again, struck by utter terror at the new possibility in your brain that if you fall asleep you'll just wake up back with the horrorterrors. You nestle impossibly close into Dave and make a little terrified noise that immediately makes him hold you tighter, hushing you softly and petting his fingers through your hair again.

After two or three minutes, you raise your head, and the hand in his shirt slowly untangles itself to run up to his shades, resting on them as you make a soft little questioning noise, hoping your wordless request gets across - you're just too tired to verbally express it right now. He nods gently, and you take them off, setting them down next to you and resting your hand on his cheek, looking into his eyes. They're orange now, but they're the same eyes as the eyes you saw at 2am over call when you were laughing about silly videos, the same eyes you saw in his infrequent selfies he'd sometimes send you when he was feeling particularly adventurous.

You already knew it was him, you knew it was your Dave, but somehow this makes it all sink in, that you're here, and he's here, and he's holding you for the first time in your fucking life, and not only are you not consumed by the horrorterrors but you can't even hear them, and he's not disappointed by how poorly you did, he's okay with you, he still cares about you, he loves you, and it's -

Honestly, it's a little much to take in.

All you can do is touch his cheek gently, eyes locked with his, and, with an effort, whisper, "I missed you."

And he grins at you, he laughs a little brokenly, with tears glinting behind his eyes, and he replies, "I missed you, too. Every day, Rose, I wanted to come back for you so bad, I wanted to get you so fucking badly, I swear."

And that's all it takes for you to start crying again, because your other half kept looking for you, even after you told him (the lie that) you'd join up with the alpha timeline, he kept looking for you, and somehow it makes those weeksmonthsyearsdecadescenturies not hurt so much, because the entire time he was thinking about you. He didn't forget you for the other, better Rose. He didn't brush you off to do more important things. He remembered, and that's what's swimming in your head as you bury your face in his neck and just let him hold you.

You're drifting off again, and it fucking terrifies you, but you're so, so goddamn tired, you haven't had a good night's sleep in longer than you can ever remember (maybe you never have), so you raise your head with an effort, and, with a voice thick with sleep, you breathe into him, "Don't leave me." It's a desperate plea more than a command, because God fucking knows you could never command him, and you know he can tell it's not an order better than even you can.

"I won't," he promises, shaking his head with just the slightest of movements. "Never again, Rose, never, I swear to you, not for the universe."

"If I sleep, will I go back?" Your voice cracks a little on the last syllable, and you hate yourself a little for it, but you want him, need him to reassure you that this isn't a too-good dream you're going to slip away from.

"When you wake up, you'll be back here," and you notice he doesn't say where you'll go when you sleep, because you and he both know the horrible, horrible dreams you've both gone through. But that's enough for you, because you're drop-dead tired, you're tired in every inch of your skin and every ounce of your bones, and you just want to sleep.

"Be here when I wake up," and again it's a begging request instead of the order it's seemingly disguised as, passing through lips heavy with exhaustion and clumsy with a language they're not used to anymore.

"Wouldn't leave you for the world," he reassures you, and you breathe out into his skin as you fall into sleep, into the first peaceful sleep you've had in maybe your entire life.

The last thing you think is how grateful you are that out of all places to be after your timeline collapsed, you found your Dave again within an hour.


	2. Chapter 2

When you wake up, it's from the first dreamless, rejuvenating sleep you've had in at least decades, maybe longer. You're cuddled up to a warm figure, and there's nothing screaming at you, and there's nothing pulling at your brain one way or another, you're just allowed to kind of.... float. To breathe.

You don't open your eyes until you've been awake for at least half an hour or so. You don't even let yourself remember where you are, or what's going on, until then, because the delicious nothingness is too beautiful. To be able to have a blank head is a privilege you've never truly experienced, and it's one you're planning on taking full advantage of.

Once you do open your eyes, you see Dave (sans glasses, which makes you feel more comfortable), holding you tight still, and everything inside you relaxes a little more, because he didn't leave you, he stayed with you, and this is all happy and blurry-peaceful like a too-good dream, and you're absolutely clinging to it, unwilling to let it go.

"Mornin', sunshine," he says with a little laugh, and everything seems right with the universe.

You nuzzle into his chest and let him hold you, making a soft noise of assent and shuddering gently. You give yourself a second to make sure your vocal chords and brain are lined up to make English before replying, "Good morning." Your voice is dry and cracked and a little dark and broken, but Dave smiles, and you don't even feel self-conscious about it. "... how long was I asleep?"

"Couple days," he replies, and you startle, sitting up a little until he gently pushes you back down. "Chill out, chill out, we knew you were okay. I've got not one but two Life players at my beck and call," he smirks, and you snort back softly, relaxing into him again. "Crocker came in every so often and made sure you were okay."

"I have no idea who that is," you mutter against him, frowning a little.

"Cute little girl, she's so small, like literally five feet tall."

"Fuck you," you mumble with absolutely no malice, and he laughs, and it's like every good moment of those seven months with him rolled into one without the lingering terrifying deadline in the background. It feels good, it feels right, like there's nothing in the world that can make things bad again, and you choose to believe that there really isn't.

After a few moments, you speak up again. "I'm fucking starved," you sigh, pulling away from him a little and lacing your fingers with his talons. You were right, his fingers aren't quite fingers anymore, but you don't give a fuck, you're going to hold his hand anyway.

"I figured," he replies, lacing his talons back against your fingers. "We've got some good as hell food. Seriously, the best thing about being on a smogless world is how fucking delicious all the food is, I'm banning cars until we can figure out how to keep everything this delicious forever."

"How dare you stand in the way of progress," you reply dryly.

"Look, Rose, once you taste it you'll understand, I swear to fuck, it's like someone picked sweet baby Jesus directly from his virgin mother's arms and fed him to us."

"Blasphemous and gross, how did I ever get along without you to interject these types of things into my daily life." You roll your eyes before quieting slightly. "... I'll probably have to meet everyone soon, won't I."

Dave shrugs slightly. "Eventually," he replies with a little nod. "But I'm sure as hell not gonna rush you, and I got people to pass the memo along that nobody else is gonna either. If you wanna push it off, I don't care, and neither does anyone else. Especially... y'know."

You do know, and it makes you feel a little sick to your stomach. Eventually, at some point, you're going to have to talk to a Jade and a John that are not yours, but are still kind of yours, and a Rose that's not you, but still kind of you.

You've spent a long time being angry at the alpha timeline Rose (for having your Dave, YOUR Dave, while you had NO ONE) and the alpha timeline John and Jade (for being able to live, when you, as far as you were concerned, didn't), and you've spent a lot of years having nightmares about them (especially John and Jade), and you're not looking forward to it.

But, well, time marches on, no matter what you feel about it. And you're (assumedly) going to be living with these people now, so you're going to have to figure it out and deal with your shit sooner or later.

But maybe you'll take a slightly larger portion of that "later."

You nod slightly. "Do you guys have showers and stuff, then? I have an astonishing amount of energy, now that They're not running around antagonizing me anymore." You laugh softly, a little sadly.

Dave doesn't even have to ask who you mean by Them. Even before he left, you'd stopped referring to the horrorterrors by their names and just used "Them." It felt less like you were honoring them, less like you were recognizing them, less like you were drawing their attention. "Hell yeah, we do," he replies with a laugh. "Plumbing is kind of weird right now, so they're all in separate rooms in their own building, but we've got 'em. Do you think I'd stick around here if I couldn't even take a shower? I don't fuckin think so. I'd go live near a river. We have a bunch of those, too. Y'know, I never really got a chance to test it, because I lived in goddamn Houston all my life, but it turns out I'm a country kid and absolutely not a city kid. Who'da thunk? Not me, that's for damn sure."

You don't even try to get a word in edgewise like you used to. Somewhere near the beginning of his ramble, you realized that this is the first true conversation you've had with another human being in _centuries._ Before they started disappearing, you occasionally talked to your consorts, but they really weren't very good conversational partners. You sent messages to your friends' chumhandles, but of course they never responded.

And now you have Dave, your Dave, your other half, sitting here and rambling about inane and useless bullshit just like he used to, and he's holding you, and he's really here, and you're really here, and all of a sudden you can't really handle that, you can't really handle the fact that you're alive, and you're real, and so is he, and something that was still lingering in your brain (this isn't real this isn't where you should be you cheated Them but They'll get you back i fucking promise you) breaks into a million pieces.

Before he's even done with the last syllable, you bury your face in his chest and you're crying again, and a long time ago it would've been embarrassing and humiliating, but now it's just relieving.

Because a long time ago, you were a 13 year old with a superiority complex who'd literally never made a friend in person. A kid who had learned to socialize through the internet and learned to read people by matching them up to (admittedly dubious at times) psychological profiles. Someone whose psychotic bipolar drove a freakish fixation on DSMs and psychology textbooks.

Since then, you lived through seven months (give or take) of near-isolation, during which you and the only other living human being (your other half, your better half, your fucking _sanity_ ) went in a roundabout of breakdowns and consolation and breakdowns and consolation and nightmares and reassurance. You lived for another very, very long time routinely killing yourself and being brought back in a world where you were the last human, where your only companions were game constructs. You became unmistakably tangled up in eldritch gods and terrifying abominations, who just exacerbated your existing mental conditions into oblivion.

A long time ago, you were a child, a weak child who was unwilling to show that weakness.

And now, you're hundreds of years old, and you know the meaning of utter hopelessness.

You've broken down with Dave dozens of times, maybe hundreds of times, and it doesn't hurt anymore. It doesn't scare you. It just lets you let go.

His talons are in your hair, and he's hushing you again (hey, hey, its okay, rose its okay), letting you cry yourself out on him again, just allowing you to be scared and terrified and horrified and so fucking _relieved_. You'd never thought you would get here. You hoped beyond all hope that you'd find Dave in your next life, wherever the terrors placed you, but you didn't think it would be like this, and you feel a lot of things, but for some reason you're mostly just so happy that it's hard to contain.

It's only maybe eight or ten minutes this time before you calm down, and he doesn't stop running his nails across your scalp and holding you tight against him. He laughs a little once you've really stopped crying. "I can be a city kid if it's that important to you, Rose."

You snort uneloquently, a little laugh slipping through your lips. "Maybe it is," you reply a little hoarsely. "But right now, I think I'll settle for the country."

"Damn, you've made the right choice." He rests his head on top of yours, and you sigh contentedly. "You wanna shower and eat right now, or you wanna wait a little while?"

You twist your lips and think for a second. "... I'm hungry enough to eat a fucking whale," you finally decide. "I think I want to take a shower now, and maybe... you can use your apparent connections to get me some dinner, or breakfast, or whatever time it is outside?"

"I'll get you whatever the hell you want," he replies with a grin. "Thanks to our scientific goddamn geniuses, you can basically have whatever your heart desires."

"I would settle for a pile of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, as long as there's a lot of them," you say, sitting up somewhat slowly. Dave follows you, helping you just a little. "But if you're really offering, I would love something traditionally 'dinner.' You know, like, meat and starch and vegetable."

"Now you're speaking my language," he grins, standing up with you. You're a little shaky on your feet, but you hold his hand tightly and he reciprocates. "I'll ask one of the resident cooks to get you something, it'll be no big deal."

He crouches down to grab a cane from under the bed, not letting go of your hand, and you nod slightly to him. "You okay?" you ask, nothing more than mild curiosity tinting your words.

With a slight sigh, he looks down at the cane like it's going to come to life and beat him up. "Yeah, turns out becoming a horrifying crow-human-sprite amalgamation is shit for your body."

You nod slightly. "Ended up prototyping yourself," you reply, less a question and more a statement. You'd tossed that possibility around when you were still together in the old timeline, but it had been a bit of a last-ditch option.

He nods and gestures to the nightstand, where his glasses are sitting, and you grab them and hand them to him. "The end of the game gave me a body back, but kind of fucked it up."

"I'll kick its ass for you," you offer dryly, walking with him as he leads you outside. It's actually pretty late, so nobody's out, which you're glad for. You're not ready for any meetings right now.

He laughs. "Thanks, but I don't think that'll do much. It might make it wanna fuck me over more, actually. You never know with this piece of shit."

"Yeah, fair enough." He opens the door to what looks kind of like the inside of an apartment building, a hallway with a bunch of doors on either side. You frown. "So, these are all just... bathrooms?"

"I know, I know, it's kinda weird," he replies. "But you've got privacy, don't worry."

You shrug. "I'm not." After a long second, you look down at your hands, which are still entwined. "... you'll come back and wait for me when you're done talking to whoever?"

"'Course," he confirms. "And take as long as you need. The science-y guys have it all worked out, Dirk takes like hour and a half long showers and it doesn't even run out of hot water."

You take a deep breath and let go of his hand. It leaves you feeling very slightly less whole, but you're stable enough that you're not going to have another breakdown for it. "Alright then, I'll see you in a little bit?"

"Sure will." He shoots you a haphazard two-finger salute. "I'll be sitting out here waiting for you when you're done."

That's good enough for you, and you head in to take a shower.

Similarly to everything else, it's not exactly the most polished thing, but any worries you may have had about the architecture melt away once you get under the hot water. There's already supplies in the shower, and everything kind of calms down in your head when you're focused on nothing but the warm water and the feeling of shampoo in your hair.

You do take a pretty long time, somewhere just over half an hour by your estimate, and you're just starting to worry about what you're going to do about clothes when you step out of the shower and note them folded up by the sink and, assumingly, clean. You allow yourself a couple seconds to freak the fuck out at the thought that someone came into the bathroom and moved your clothes before logic comes back into play and you remember that you locked the door, and half an hour is nowhere near long enough to wash and dry laundry.

You make a mental note to ask Dave and towel off, picking the leggings out of your ensemble (leggings never felt very good with your big thighs anyway) and getting dressed again. You brush your hair off and take a deep breath, looking at yourself in the mirror.

Back in ~~your timeline~~ , you had a full-length mirror in your room, and no matter where you moved it, no matter how thoroughly you shattered it, whenever you died, you'd wake up with it right across from you. The first thing you always saw after your regeneration was your face, and you got very, very used to it after a while. You were used to a certain amount of darkness in your eyes, to anger and pain clouding the light purple you used to be in turns proud and ashamed of.

The Rose you see looking back at you in the mirror is older, older by probably two or three years; she has clear eyes, and her face is relaxed, less stressed and tired just from a cursory glance, and her fingers only barely shake as she brushes her hair behind her ear.

It's almost unnerving.

You set your headband on your head, briefly admire how the orange outfit looks really damn good with your medium skin tone (way better than purple, what the fuck were you even thinking), and walk out of the bathroom, turning the light off behind you as you step out.

You're almost worried that Dave won't be there, but of course, he is, sitting just outside the door playing something on a 3DS. At the sound of the door opening, he looks up and grins, capchaloguing his game and hauling himself up to two feet. "How was your shower, Miss Lalonde?" he asks.

"Good as ever, Strider," you snort slightly. You hold up the wet towel still in your hands. "Am I to assume we have a repository for towels, or?"

"Yeah, we'll make a stop back at my room, nobody has a lot of laundry but anything that isn't God Tier outfits has to get cleaned eventually."

You frown, falling into step with him. (Your hand surreptitiously finds his, and you're okay with that, too.) "... God Tier outfits? Because my clothing seemed to mysteriously clean itself up while I was in the shower."

"Yeah, you're God Tier." You raise an eyebrow, and he grins widely at you. "Damn, I forgot to tell you, didn't I?"

"... how? I never ascended."

He laughs and disentangles his talons from your fingers for a second to wiggle them at you. "Bullshit game magic," he explains, taking your hand again. "Apparently the game decided everyone had done something great by even getting to the end, so it auto-God-Tier'd any players who got here."

You blink, filing that information away. You don't feel very different, aside from feeling maybe more confident (though you'd chalked that up to not being harassed by horrifying godbeings from the furthest realm), but then again you suppose both Seer abilities and Light abilities are, from your admittedly paltry knowledge, pretty passive. "So, did you ascend, too?"

"Sure fuckin' did," he confirms. "Knight of time, fully realized and all. It's pretty sweet, honestly."

You open Dave's door and toss the towel into a pile of clothes he nods toward, and then he starts leading you toward (hopefully) food. "Well, I'm... glad we've both ascended," you reply quietly.

He seems to catch something in your tone, and looks over at you, cocking his head slightly. "You okay?" he asks softly.

You don't reply for fifteen seconds or so. One of the things you've always been grateful for is that Dave became very, very okay with pauses when you talked to each other. He likes to ramble, and you like to indulge him on that, but when you need silence, he's learned to give it to you. So the pause, where you figure out if you are, in fact, okay or not, isn't awkward so much as it is just... quiet.

"... I'm not sure," you finally reply. "I... don't particularly... like the idea of living forever."

Something clicks in him at that, and he stops walking, turning to you and leaning his cane against his leg so he can take both your hands. You look up slightly at him, close enough to see through his shades, and take a deep breath, trying to stop fucking _shaking_.

"You know you're not going to do it on your own this time, right Rose?" he breathes quietly, his eyes searching your face as you clasp his hands tightly. "You know I'm not gonna leave you again, yeah?"

You bark a very short laugh, and you can feel your hands shaking just a little more. "... I know," you reply, just as quietly. "... I know." You take a deep breath. "... but what if They take you away from me?"

"They can't," he replies, and he does it with such conviction, such absolute certainty that your reflexive instinct is to believe him. "I won't let them."

He doesn't capitalize Their name like you do, and it throws you for a loop a bit. He throws the pronoun away, where you treat it like a holy word in every way. He doesn't treat it with reverence - in fact, he doesn't treat it with anything but ambivalence. And you realize that, as much as you tell yourself that you hate Them, that you despise what They've done to you, in the end you embraced Their touch and Their words, and you've treated it like scripture even while cursing it.

Without Them in your head, it feels a little more clear to you. It feels a little more unsettling, too.

"... Promise?" you ask quietly, silently hating the break in your voice with the word.

"Promise," he confirms, squeezing your hands gently before dropping one to pick up his cane again, heading to (what you assume is) the dining hall once more.

"Okay, so, I should warn you," he continues, steering the conversation away from terrible things, "our resident cooks are not... human. Those things that were trolling us for ages? Turns out, yeah, they really aren't human. They really are called trolls."

"Oh." You frown. "Well, I met one of the... trolls earlier."

"Oh, really?" He tilts his head a little. "Which one?"

You try to think about things that would help you describe them other than "not human" and "horns." "... Short, around my height, kind of stocky, grey turtleneck?"

Dave laughs. "You got a head start on meeting the current cook, then. His name's Karkat, and he's absolutely fucking hilarious."

You snort softly. "I look forward to meeting him."

You step into the dining hall and take a second just to look around. Then you get a smell of food - real food, food that didn't just come out of an alchemizer fully prepared - and you just about faint as your body realizes how fucking hungry you are.

"Wow, what a goddamn surprise, you actually fucking made it here." Cranky inappropriate alien, whose name is apparently Karkat, has a bite to his voice that's very slightly intimidating, though the effect is ruined by the fact that he's wearing a pink apron clearly meant for someone much taller than him. "Come eat your shitty human food."

You look at him, and English doesn't want to come out of your lips anymore. You didn't have much of a problem with Dave, though you did have to concentrate a little on maintaining English, but now that someone else is around, someone new, you're... a little broken again.

After a solid three seconds of you just standing there, he raises an eyebrow. "Is your human broken," he asks, directing his question to Dave.

"She ain't 'mine,' and also fuck off," Dave replies, tugging lightly at your hand to get you to walk forward and sit down at the table. The movement is enough to jar you out of it somewhat, and you're able to sit down on your own, looking down at a plate of steak and rice and sautéed vegetables that looks like just about the best thing you're ever going to eat. Ever. In your entire existence.

You look up at Karkat, nodding your head to him. "... It looks delicious," you say, and it takes you a little longer than you'd like to get the words out, but you mean it.

"At least someone gets the finer arts of food in this godforsaken universe," Karkat replies with a pointed look at Dave.

"Hey," Dave snorts, "I care about food, just not to the batshit extent you do. Nobody's gonna kill you if you just alchemize the stuff, buddy."

"Don't you 'buddy' me, _pal_ , unless you've been eating legume-shaped plastic packing material your whole life, you can't fucking deny that cooked food is vastly superior to alchemized food in every goddamn way, including but not limited to taste, texture, and how it looks when I throw it in your gross fucking soft face."

"I mean, I guess I can't deny that my face makes anything you put on it beautiful."

Karkat makes a sound somewhere between a groan, a yell, a sigh, and a growl, which you actually have to congratulate him on at some point. It's not easy to mesh all those sounds together. "You're fucking worse than _my_ Dave, Jesus dickshitting Christ on a two-wheeled device."

"You can just call it a bicycle, dude, the 'inexplicably long and descriptive names for things' thing got old and uncute really fast. It's useless at this point."

Karkat growls (and this time it really is just basically a growl). "Well, so are you."

Before you're even 100% aware of what you're doing, you have him pinned up against the wall, your steak knife against his throat as you snarl in his face. He's the same height as you, and you can see that he's done a lot of fighting, but so have you, and your instinct, your kneejerk reactions, every bone in your body is saying one thing.

Protect what's yours.

"I can tell you like to talk a lot," you snarl at him, your face up close to his. "And I don't mind people who talk a lot. But if you ever, ever, _ever_ make another flippant remark putting down _my_ fucking Dave, we're going to have a goddamn problem. Do you understand?"

He's just kind of looking at you wide-eyed, looking a little awed and a little pants-shittingly terrified and a lot confused.

"Do you understand?" You repeat the question, pressing your knife against his neck a little further, and that's when you tune in enough to hear something behind you.

"Hey, Rose, let's put the horrible helltroll down and go back to English and finish up dinner so you can get some more sleep, yeah? I mean, don't get me wrong, I would totally 100% love to do the same thing to this dude on a daily basis, but first of all, insulting him in a different language doesn't do a whole lot for anyone, and second, we're working on being nice to everyone here, even the people who killed lots of people, and this guy is just super annoying, he didn't even really kill anyone."

The drawn-out ramble, spoken more like you're watching a movie and less like you have a knife to someone's throat, brings you down very softly until all of a sudden everything kind of snaps, and you realize you just threatened a totally innocent stranger in Their language while holding a knife to him.

Fuck.

You drop the knife and take a sharp step back, desperately yanking your brain into English and almost instinctively trying to make yourself smaller, less of a threat - it worked with Them, maybe it'll work with these people, maybe you won't get thrown out days after finally finally finally getting your Dave back, oh god what did you do, what were you thinking, you shouldn't be around people, you were around nobody for centuries, why did you think you could just waltz back into being around other people and have it be okay, what's going to happen to you -

You realize a little late that you've got a soft, heavily accented stream of "Sorry, sorry, sorry, sorry" going through your lips, and Karkat still looks really confused, but more worried than anything now. You feel a taloned hand on your arm, and despite jumping at its initial touch, you quickly melt back into Dave, turning your gaze away from Karkat to bury your face in his chest, and there's a quick exchange over your head ("look just dont tell anyone" "I WON'T, DON'T WORRY ABOUT IT") before the room is quiet again.

It takes a couple minutes, but soon you're somewhat calm again, breathing quietly, and your hands aren't shaking quite so bad. "... I'm sorry."

"It's okay," Dave replies softly. "It'll always be okay."

You hesitate for a second, your fingers still wrapped in his shirt. "Are you sure about that?"

"Of course I am," he replies, his talons carding through your hair. "Vantas is a shitwagon of the highest degree, but he's also a pretty decent person, he's not going to go around calling for your head or anything."

"... okay." You take a deep breath and pull away from him, turning to your food again. "... I'm sorry."

"It's okay, Rose, I promise." He takes your arm lightly before you sit down, gesturing to your steak knife on the floor, and you pick it up and wipe it off before going back to eating.

You swear you lose some time, because it's like you blink and your plate is totally empty save for the bone and you're fighting the super embarrassing urge to lick it clean. "... he's a _really_ good cook," you say in surprise.

"Yeah, all reports from other Dave and Rose say he was complete garbage before they met up, but apparently other Rose taught Kanaya who taught him."

"... that doesn't mean a whole lot to me," you admit with a little uncertain laugh. "What even happened while I was gone?"

"A whole bunch of bullshit," Dave grumbles, putting his sunglasses up on his head. "The short story is, about half the trolls died, other Rose and Dave, the five surviving trolls, and this super cute short dude who calls himself a mayor lived on a meteor, and me, Jade, John, and Nannasprite lived on a battleship. That happened for like three years, and then everyone met up and kicked Lord English's ass into oblivion. Also there's four other kids who are like... our parents, but from an alternate timeline where we were their parents. And one of them's dating a super cute green alien girl."

You frown, trying to piece all that together. "... okay, I have no idea what you're talking about."

"It's okay, neither do I ninety percent of the time." He grins. "The only thing you really have to worry about is that there's twelve trolls, eight humans, a dad, a cute alien, and a carapace for you to meet."

"Christ." You rub your forehead quietly. "That's quite the cast."

He takes your hand reassuringly. "You can take your time. There's no rush."

You smile quietly. "... I think right now I need some more sleep first," you reply after a second of contemplation. "And then maybe we can start with whoever the most low-key person is and work our way up."

"You're gonna love Crocker," he laughs, standing up with you as you grab your plate and move to go wash it off in the sink. "She's super nice, and really really cute." He gestures through his speaking, showing you where the trash is, where the soap is, where to put your dish when you're done. "She does all the baking, she's John's alternate universe Nanna and was apparently in line to inherit Betty Crocker entirely."

"I'm sure John was thrilled by that," you say, soft sarcasm sneaking into your words.

"Well, Betty Crocker did actually end up being controlled by an evil alien overlord. So."

You raise an eyebrow at him, putting your dish away and taking his hand again. "I can't decide if you're fucking with me."

"No lie." He laughs, putting his sunglasses back over his eyes as you open the door to the dining hall. "A version of the trolls' terrifying empress lady. Because things just didn't intersect enough yet."

"That's actually pretty incredible."

"Yeah, you're telling me." He rolls his eyes. "She's better than fucking Nannasprite."

"... Nannasprite is an old lady, Dave."

Dave tilts his head toward you, and you're close enough that you can see his eyes widen behind his shades. "Okay, no. Nannasprite is not an old lady. Nannasprite is fucking nightmares made flesh."

You laugh. "There's no way she's that bad."

"Not that bad? Okay, look. I lived on that goddamn ship with Jade and John for like three _fucking_ years. She made cakes every goddamn day."

"Now you're starting to sound like John."

"I'm not finished!!" He says the words so intensely you have to stifle a laugh. "And almost every goddamn day, she would throw a cake _right in my fucking face_. FOR THREE YEARS!!!!!"

You can't help it, you let out a laugh, and he looks incredibly wounded, which just makes you laugh harder. "I'm sorry for your pain, I really am," you manage between giggles.

"That wasn't even the worst thing," he continues, opening his bedroom door and walking you in. "The worst thing was my birthday. I would've forgiven her somewhat for caking me on my birthday. It's a birthday prank, whatever. But birthdays were the ONLY DAY she DIDN'T CAKE ME!!!!!!!"

The rising indignation in his voice triggers another round of giggles as you sit on the bed, letting him set his cane under the bed and his glasses on the nightstand and closing your eyes while he changes into more comfortable night clothes. "I'm sure she could be reasoned with."

"She absolutely could not," he replies, distressed. "One time, I literally went under the ship and clung to the hull like a barnacle to try and get away from the cake. You want to know what happened?"

"She caked you?" you guess.

"SHE CAKED ME!!!!!!"

You burst into laughter again, your cheeks starting to hurt from the grin on your lips. "Oh, sure, laugh at my pain," Dave continues, though you can tell he's not altogether serious. "My cakey, cakey pain."

"I'm sorry, but you're just so indignant about this whole thing," you giggle.

"I am justified in my indignance. Indignity? Indignification?" He touches your shoulder, and you open your eyes as he comes over to lay down, snorting at you. "Whatever, I deserve to be indignant."

You take your headband off and set it gently on top of Dave's glasses before cuddling up against his chest, almost unconsciously clinging to him. "I'm sure you do. Maybe one day you can cake her back."

"She'd probably just bake a million cakes and bury me in them," he grumbles, setting his head on yours. "Fuckin' devil woman."

"That's rude," you laugh, closing your eyes and resting your hand on his chest to find his heartbeat.

"I'm rude," he mumbles, putting his hand on top of yours. "Especially to _fuckin' devil women_."

You snort and start to sync your breathing against his heartbeat, closing your eyes and nestling against him. "We'll work on it," you say quietly, realizing how tired you still are all of a sudden.

He holds you tight, and you feel him nod. "Tomorrow, though."

"Tomorrow, though," you agree, your words already getting heavy with sleep.

He laughs softly, warmly, above you, and it's the last thing you hear before slipping off into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i bet you thought i forgot about this fic
> 
> well you were wroNG actually you were right i forgot but not to fear i'll have wifi in a week and should be updating every other week from then on out
> 
> i have a full time job and two fics and a book in progress
> 
> but yeah sorry lol peace

**Author's Note:**

> BE SURE TO LIKE COMMENT & SUBSCRIBE 4 MORE OF THE SAME #RELATABLE GAY CONTENT
> 
> (even if u comment that u hate it i thrive off attention)


End file.
